Friday, February 08, 2013

No one believes the 6.9% unemployment rate is cause for the sort of conga line celebration Paula Bennett will be trying to start. The reason it has dropped is because participation rate collapsed, if they hadn't our unemployment rate would be 8.4%...

The unemployment rate dropped to 6.9 per cent from 7.3 per cent in September because of a collapse in labour force participation - the proportion of the working age population either employed or actively seeking work. It recorded its steepest fall and to the lowest levels since 2004.

Had the participation rate remained unchanged, the unemployment rate would have been an eye-watering 8.4 per cent, the highest since 1994, ANZ economist Sharon Zollner said.

So many NZers have just given up looking for work. How's that empty aspiration that Key peddles feeling now?

I think Maori unemployment at 14.8%, Pacific at 16%, youth at 30.9% & the female rate at 7.6% is far more important than what Titewhai does. It's a pity our juvenile mainstream media refused to see that on Waitangi Day and wallowed in the mud of race baiting to ignore the bigger issues to focus on their favorite Maori hate figure.

National can't use their economic record to win the 2014 election, because their right ideology empowers the rich. "We made the 1% richer" isn't really much of an election vision that even the sleepy hobbits would buy into so Key and Co will spend the next year attacking every wedge group they can find be it beneficiaries, Maori, solo parents or the unemployed.

Key's bash & dash at Waitangi where he claimed Maori activists were to blame for Maori not getting ahead shows Key preparing the dog whistles for the response to the Supreme Court case he is about to lose.

1 Comments:

The reason it has dropped is because participation rate collapsed, if they hadn't our unemployment rate would be 8.4%...

And this is also EXACTLY what has happened in the US, witness this: http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000

So much for Obama's, Bernanke's and MMT academic's (aka neo-Keynesians) babble of an "economic recover" and "green-shoots". There has been ZERO actual recovery, despite the massive rise in the stock market (which is all Bernanke's QE has achieved). This is a huge problem because ONLY people working can be taxed, which means the US deficit (and ours) won't be going down any time soon. It's all been smoke and mirrors since the great financial collapse of 2007, and sooner or later we will find out the emperors have no clothes. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-02-04/subsidy-addiction-jobs-vs-foodstampshttp://www.zerohedge.com/news/2012-12-09/foodstamps-soar-most-16-months-over-1-million-americans-enter-poverty-last-two-month

You can only goose the economy for so long (although admittedly Japan has been managing it for two decades now), but it is a mathematically certainty that this is not sustainable forever.